BF4 PC Configs

TerrorFirmer

I'm using Win8.1 now. I didn't want to, but now that I have, I'm actually really impressed. It's way faster than Win7 for boot up and shut down, and with customization and using the Start8 app, it's pretty much identical to Win7 to boot.

TheTacticsGuy

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

brief tip from rivalxfactor that I tested and seems to work wonders:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkfIFP0g2xY&feature=c4-overview&list=UUXN76fKLJUFeMK12fAN5Gug

though I advise against changing any video settings midgame, it seems your fps will always drop and never recover until the next map loads.

This worked wonders for you??? Is it worth unparking the cores?

TerrorFirmer

The unparking core thing did nothing for me whatsoever, but it seems to be working for a lot of people.

5uspect

Op Locker runs like a dog for me oddly enough.

SgtBob

Haven't gotten around to picking it up yet.

But I just built a new system and ran the beta on Ultra @ 1080p, didn't get a chance to check the fps, but ran perfect for playing.

i5-4670K & GTX 770 on Win 8 64bit

Gehad_JoyRider

My set up is

Windows 7
Vapor x 7950 oc'd
fx 8350

Ill do some bench marks later and let you know I just picked up the game... Worst thing is I've got a flu so ill be about as usefull as a kick in the balls over the next few days.

Sparks

This is my now-ancient gaming rig, but it seems to cope with BF4 on low res settings. I *can* crank everything up to ultra on full res, but it's not so much a game at that point as it is a powerpoint presentation

I might look into buying another GTX560Ti card to run in SLI I suppose, get a bit more life out of the thing (hell, it runs Kerbal Space Program and BF3 just fine)... if I could find one that is, they seem to be discontinued and out of stock everywhere. Feck.

EoinHef

There is one 560ti on amazon,it looks a little pricey though,and its a 1GB model. Only 2 left in stock

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gainward-Nvidia-GeForce-GTX560-Graphics/dp/B004ZWV38W/ref=sr_1_2?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1383690654&sr=1-2&keywords=560ti

Sparks

And it's not an exact match to the one I have and for SLI, who needs extra complications?

BlitzKrieg

Sparks wrote: »

This is my now-ancient gaming rig, but it seems to cope with BF4 on low res settings. I *can* crank everything up to ultra on full res, but it's not so much a game at that point as it is a powerpoint presentation

I might look into buying another GTX560Ti card to run in SLI I suppose, get a bit more life out of the thing (hell, it runs Kerbal Space Program and BF3 just fine)... if I could find one that is, they seem to be discontinued and out of stock everywhere. Feck.

I've just upgraded from my 560ti to a HD7870 (which I scored of Ebay for £100) my 560ti is a palit brand one that came with my pc when I bought it in 2010.

battser

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

I've just upgraded from my 560ti to a HD7870 (which I scored of Ebay for £100) my 560ti is a palit brand one that came with my pc when I bought it in 2010.

What are you getting out of that and is it solid? I'd be weary of Ebay but for that price maybe worth a shot. Also pm a link to the ebay shop mayhaps? cheers

BlitzKrieg

battser wrote: »

What are you getting out of that and is it solid? I'd be weary of Ebay but for that price maybe worth a shot. Also pm a link to the ebay shop mayhaps? cheers

it was an auction, not a shop. Guy was upgrading and I got lucky in the bid.

I have a crappy cpu (amd phenom X4 955) that is desperate to be upgraded and all my other hardware is 2010 but my fps fluctuates between 40-60fps depending on the map in multiplayer when I have it set all the High

maps like locker, siege of shanghai and floodzone are almost consistent 60fps or at least 50/55fps depending on whats happening

hanoin resort and railway fluctuate wildly

parasel storm is weird I get better fps when the storm kicks in then when it's weather is calm.

i think it's vegetation that throws my fps into a dive more then anything Zavod, parasel and hanoin all have heavier vegetation then other maps. And they affect my fps the most

I play single player in Ultra presetting and my fps is also 40-60fps except in wide open intensive areas such as when you first arrive at shanghai tower and it has all the water effects and the helicopter and lighting etc in a big area (plus the massive screen) in front of you.

then it dives down to just above 30fps

But I am using a config file that caps my fps at 60 as I rather keep things somewhat consistent then to fluctuate wildly in multiplayer which it was earlier before I put the cap on.

I'm hoping mantel will stabalize my multiplayer until I can afford a new mobo/cpu combo. Single player I dont need a constent 60fps to enjoy the ride as long as it stays above 30fps which it does comfortably almost all the time.

The oddest part is that the training range gives me fantastic fps, even when I'm going nuts with explosions etc but I think it's small size allows that.

I've been happy with my amd cpus this is the second one I've used and both have worked flawlessly me.

I am tempted to stay with AMD and get the 8350 or similar but everyone tells me intel has them completely beaten.

BlitzKrieg

actually ignore what I said my fps is completely defined by the bottleneck my cpu puts on the graphics card.

Just tried two maps in multiplayer with the ultra pre setting


Parasel Island with nobody else on the server and my fps was pretty much the same as my fps when I cut the settings down 40-60

Then I jumped into Hanoin resort in a full game and I was getting pretty much the same with the odd drop into just below 40 when looking out over the whole map.

So I imagine if I get a good cpu I'll get a much improved fps.

TerrorFirmer

Sparks wrote: »

This is my now-ancient gaming rig, but it seems to cope with BF4 on low res settings. I *can* crank everything up to ultra on full res, but it's not so much a game at that point as it is a powerpoint presentation

I might look into buying another GTX560Ti card to run in SLI I suppose, get a bit more life out of the thing (hell, it runs Kerbal Space Program and BF3 just fine)... if I could find one that is, they seem to be discontinued and out of stock everywhere. Feck.

If you are using an X3 CPU, that's a bottleneck, which would go most of the way explaining your performance, you could add a GTX Titan tomorrow and still have poor enough performance!

Pixmania sell brand new 7870's for 149.99 including delivery which is about the best price to performance ratio buy.

Dcully

cherryghost wrote: »

Yet more proof W8 outperforms W7 in the benches

The point i made earlier still holds true, the beta of BF4 had Win 8.1 with 20% fps boost but only before they patched the beta.
After that both the beta and now with the full game there is very little between them.
The difference is marginal,a few frames wont be noticed at all.
Nothing against Win 8 ,i just dont see the point upgrading for a few extra frames.

TerrorFirmer

I went to Win8.1 back before I solved my problem thinking it would help - it doesn't, framerate didn't change whatsoever, though I have to admit, there's a lot of negativity surrounding Win8 that it doesn't deserve. I prefer it over 7 now, much faster and functions essentially the exact same once you get the €4 Start8 addon.

Sparks

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

If you are using an X3 CPU, that's a bottleneck, which would go most of the way explaining your performance, you could add a GTX Titan tomorrow and still have poor enough performance!

Hence the word "ancient" :P
And upgrading the CPU is a limited sort of thing, there aren't too many AM3 socket cpus left at reasonable prices (you *can* get a phenom II X4 but they're not cheap, and there's also the point that we don't really know how well BF4 improves with multiple cores).

Nix the SLI idea as well, I doublechecked the motherboard to discover no SLI support at all.

Pixmania sell brand new 7870's for 149.99 including delivery which is about the best price to performance ratio buy.

Hang on. €300 or so for a cpu, €150 for a new graphics card, €50-odd for "premium" membership and €45 for the game itself?

Y'know, I might just turn down the graphics and get on with what I have and laugh every time I beat someone with hardware that costs twice what I have


(Besides, you've got fancier hardware, I've got an 11 ping :P )

TerrorFirmer

What's your motherboard exact model? You could get an X4 955 or 965 cheaply enough, that's still a decent enough performer even at stock speeds and would give you a much better minimum and average over an X3! That'd be about....say, 70 euro.

Sell the 560Ti for about 90, the x3 for whatever you can get, 30 euro even....buy the 7870....total cost: about 100 euro all in for a much better experience.

Even if you kept the 560Ti (its actually OK for BF4 anyway) and just got a 955/965, you'd see a far better minimum framerate which is definitely important, and should only have a net cost of about 40 euro after you get rid of the X3.

Sparks

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

What's your motherboard exact model?

Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3

You could get an X4 955 or 965 cheaply enough, that's still a decent enough performer even at stock speeds and would give you a much better minimum and average over an X3! That'd be about....say, 70 euro.

But how much better are we talking here? I mean, the phenom x4 960 runs to about 115 euro or so; that's the week's shopping, just to inject a note of real life into it

Sell the 560Ti for about 90, the x3 for whatever you can get, 30 euro even....buy the 7870....total cost: about 100 euro all in for a much better experience.

It's not a horrid plan, but again, how much better are we talking here? Can I run in full ultra on the 1980x1200 or are we just talking about going from low on 1200x1024 at 40-50fps up to the same res and quality at 60-70fps?

Even if you kept the 560Ti (its actually OK for BF4 anyway) and just got a 955/965, you'd see a far better minimum framerate which is definitely important, and should only have a net cost of about 40 euro after you get rid of the X3.

I don't mind that idea at all, but still, how much better is the question....

jonski

I sold a 955 yesterday on adverts for about €50 .

Sparks

Yeah, but I was looking at the new prices not the used prices (because seriously, how could you tell if a used CPU was okay or not? I don't have a testing rig for one of those here ). Some stuff I'll happily buy used, but things like this I get wary of unless I know the exact history of the thing - was it ever overclocked, was it properly cooled when in use, does it get flaky and crap out when worked hard for any length of time, and so on.

TerrorFirmer

I would only buy 2nd hand, buying a new X4 negates the value of it entirely really. I've been buying 2nd hand cpu's for almost every build the past 5 years, never had an issue to be honest. If you were going to shell out 115 euro, you'd be as well off selling the X3 and board altogether and getting an Fx6300 and new board, which would only cost about €200 (or even only about €150 if you went with a cheap matx if you had no intention of overclocking).

As for how much better, well, the X4 would be considerably faster than the X3 in a game like BF4, couldn't put an exact figure on it, but your minimum framerate should be increased significantly, eg if your minimum was 20, it would be closer to 30, and if your average was 30, it would be 40+ or whatever, which is a big difference in maintaining a consistently smooth experience when your struggling a little with framerate to begin with. I think the minimum framerate is extremely important, as bad drops ruin the immersion and quality of gameplay.

The 7870 bit isn't actually all that necessary as the 560ti is a decent enough card, but a 7870 can play the game at 1080p at high-some ultra settings with a consistently high framerate no problem, once your CPU is up to the job.

BlitzKrieg

As for how much better, well, the X4 would be considerably faster than the X3 in a game like BF4, couldn't put an exact figure on it, but your minimum framerate should be increased significantly, eg if your minimum was 20, it would be closer to 30, and if your average was 30, it would be 40+ or whatever, which is a big difference in maintaining a consistently smooth experience when your struggling a little with framerate to begin with. I think the minimum framerate is extremely important, as bad drops ruin the immersion and quality of gameplay.

I'm running an X4, the fps was posted on just the last page

BlitzKrieg

Did some experimenting

I have a user.cfg file in my bf4 folder that I pulled over from the beta, without it my fps fluctuates wildly bouncing madly between 70fps and 30fps

with it on it keeps it fairly steady between 40 and 60.

anyone else wanting to see if it helps here are the details:

GameTime.MaxVariableFps 60
PerfOverlay.DrawFps 1
PostProcess.DynamicAOEnable 0
RenderDevice.Dx11Enable 0
RenderDevice.ForceRenderAheadLimit 1
RenderDevice.TripleBufferingEnable 0
WorldRender.DxDeferredCsPathEnable 0
WorldRender.FxaaEnable 0
WorldRender.MotionBlurEnable 0
WorldRender.SpotLightShadowmapEnable 0
WorldRender.SpotLightShadowmapResolution 256
WorldRender.TransparencyShadowmapsEnable 0

sadly the game looks less pretty but it smooths out my performance a lot.

Spear

It's not quite a great sample, but having gone from Vista x64 to Win 8.1 X64, I am getting higher FPS. from varying from peaking at 90+, it's now averaging 90 and peaking at 110. Could be my years old Vista install was getting creaky though.

Gehad_JoyRider

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

I am tempted to stay with AMD and get the 8350 or similar but everyone tells me intel has them completely beaten.

I have one I play battle feild 4 on it I work on photoshop, light room after effects and prem pro and its fine. the intel may edge slightly more in terms of performance the fact is It does everything I want it to do and does it well

example

Photography 6 shot stich at 25.1mp @300dpi @16bit it did it in under a minute, I can not fault that ... I dont do as much rendering but i think it runs pretty smooth

Bf4 on the 8350 plays fine its consistent i don't get lag i don't get crazy stuff happening, it plays fine all the time.. I've had 3 crashs. its a good peace of kits and if intel had amd beet why are amd's chips in xbone and ps4?

It blatant fanboyisim Intel are good but I don't necessarily agree there as fantastic as every one says they are..

cherryghost

Dcully wrote: »

The point i made earlier still holds true, the beta of BF4 had Win 8.1 with 20% fps boost but only before they patched the beta.
After that both the beta and now with the full game there is very little between them.
The difference is marginal,a few frames wont be noticed at all.
Nothing against Win 8 ,i just dont see the point upgrading for a few extra frames.

I have W7 and w8.1 on dual boot. I get about 60-70FPS on W8.1, and about 50-65 on W7. W8.1 is DEFINITELY more stable and smooth based on my experience. I'll be testing a similar build with a slower graphics card this weekend too, will report my results.

On another note some people are saying they're getting higher FPS with hyperthreading disabled. I notice no difference. Anyone else try it?

TerrorFirmer

Gehad_JoyRider wrote: »

Bf4 on the 8350 plays fine its consistent i don't get lag i don't get crazy stuff happening, it plays fine all the time.. I've had 3 crashs. its a good peace of kits and if intel had amd beet why are amd's chips in xbone and ps4?

It blatant fanboyisim Intel are good but I don't necessarily agree there as fantastic as every one says they are..

Intel do have AMD walloped in general the last few generations, the way AMD is surviving is by offering fantastic value for money - i.e the Fx6300 is only a hundred euro but it can still allow you to play modern games maxed out with a good card. Intel don't have competitive offerings in that price segment at all.
For a lot of things like you've described, The 6 and 8 cores are also extremely efficient. The 8350 is a fantastic processor for the money if you're encoding and rendering.

It's nothing to do with fanboyism, Intel are simply better when it comes to raw performance. But that comes at a significant cost increase, AMD have the budget market licked.

BlitzKrieg

If I overclock my 7870 I can get a constant 60 on almost all the maps.

Except Hanoi resort and zavod. They still cause me to struggle

Hellrazer

Sparks,

Im in the same position.
Looking at a short term upgrade.
Running a x3 Athlon aswell-it will unlock to an Phenom 2 x4 b25 on my mobo but its not stable.Have my eye on a 960t at the minute that's guaranteed to unlock to a x6.

That might be a short term upgrade for you.960t is a black edition so you can either overclock the hell out of it or unlock it to 6 cores.